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Thursday, August 10, 2017

Black doctor faced down angry white mob - and acquitted of murder

By Laura Smith

In July of 1925, a young doctor named Ossian Sweet bought a house in a middle-class Detroit neighborhood. Sweet had been living with his wife’s family and their toddler daughter in cramped quarters and craved a piece of the American homeownership dream. Instead they found themselves barricaded in their own house, armed with rifles, facing down a brutal mob.

The family should have been an ideal addition to the neighborhood, except for one fact: they were black and the neighborhood was white. Read more >>